


Any Other Patient

by doctorfourteen



Category: The Good Doctor (TV 2017)
Genre: 3x19, Angst, F/M, Melendaire, character injury, hurt/ comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:42:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23327209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorfourteen/pseuds/doctorfourteen
Summary: Melendez wants to shield her from the world, to take away every ounce of suffering she has and if he could hide her away he would. But he trusts her, knows she's strong enough. She's a terrible liar, he's too good at lying, but he can't hide his injuries from her. She makes him feel superhuman, even though he's just a man. Introspection and life saving involved. Set after 3x19.
Relationships: Claire Browne & Neil Melendez, Claire Browne/ Neil Melendez
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43





	Any Other Patient

God, he sees her face and that look of abject horror –

_No, Melendez begins to correct himself, he knows Claire too well by now. He knows that little breath that lingers at her lips, when she stifles a laugh as he makes her laugh when he shouldn’t, the way her nose wrinkles and he knows the moment they’re alone she’ll feign frustrating and tap his arm. He knows the way she will hold her breath until her lungs scream at her to breathe, just so no one will notice that she cries, she will turn her head away and only when his hand is on her shoulder he feels that sharp inhale of a deep, grasping sob as if he will protect her dignity while she cries._

The look he sees on her face is pure fear and he resents deeply that the world seems to have slowed around him, he can’t even hear his own shaky breaths anymore, they’re drawn out and suspended in air as his brow furrows and it feels like every passing moment is an eternity and the rest. He feels a gut-wrenching pain in his abdomen, the dull ache he has ignored is progressing and developing and it leaves a small sheen of sweat at his brow. He’s thrown up already, startled Claire, but the deeply unsettled feeling at the pit of his belly doesn’t go, it just grows harsher, angrier, it forces him to pay attention to it, for all he does to fight it to the back of his mind. He doesn’t know what the plan was, he’s known for some time that he’s injured but he has pushed that aside and has allowed the adrenaline to push him further and further to great heights, for just a short time it had made him feel superhuman.

He knows shock, he’s seen it time and time again in patients before his eyes; the unsettled fear of something that you just can’t quite put your fingers on, the way the vessels at his extremities tighten to protect his internal organs, the not-so-subtle way his pulse bounds and his breath shortens. He feels like he’s just run a marathon after being hit by a bus… illness is a part of life, it’s at the core of his entire world, the way diseases progress and threaten to rip everything from underneath you, leaving your legs like jelly and your heart yearning. He would perhaps think of all the patients he’s seen with that same startled expression, the way their loved ones look up to himself for _some kind_ of reassurance, no matter how little. He’d maybe even think of the ones he lost, the ones he just couldn’t save because the sands of time had just run out and even the marvels of modern medicine can’t jump those fences. But all he sees right now is the way she looks at him, it should be barely noticeable at the peripheries of his vision, but his whole world just seems to revolve around her and that doe-eyed look of fright that he wishes he could reach out to soothe, but the more the adrenaline pulses around his body, his awareness waning with each and every heartbeat he knows to be sensible and to use this time wisely.

  
 _Except, that he doesn’t._ Instead he lies to her, tries to tell her that he’s fine, he’s just shaken and needs a moment and that she should go ahead with the patient. He feels it now, that he truly isn’t alright but he just wishes that she would look away from him with that frightened expression, because until now his heart has been uninjured but that expression is now seared into his memory for an eternity, but now his heart aches and his arms feel heavy and he doesn’t quite know if it’s with a feeling of responsibility to take her in his arms or whether his consciousness is leaving his body faster than he wants to realize.

  
He sees that wide-eyed look of emotion and fright and it makes his spine tingle in an awful way as he wonders if that's what her mother saw when she would threaten her, abuse her and steal her childhood from beneath her. It’s like the ground has been pulled from beneath him as he feels a rush of guilt and fright. He wants to reassure her somehow, he musters all his strength to flash her a brief smile. He wonders what the world must look like through her eyes and he wonders how anyone can face so much heartbreak and hurt, yet still grow to be someone so kind and thoughtful. 

“Yeah,” he offers, placing a hand at his abdomen and he hopes that she doesn’t realize just how the pain is creeping into every ounce of his being. She is hurting and he’ll be damned if adds to that pile of weight on her shoulders. He’s her superior and he has a duty to her. Damn it, he just wants to protect her, to shield her from the world, no matter if he knows she can take it or not. 

“I’m just emotion…” he begins to tell her, feigning that the events of the day are catching up with him. His tongue is too heavy, even though he tries and tries to will the words to come out they just don’t. He feels the heaviness of his body colliding with the hard surface of the ambulance, he tries to reach out, grab it and hang on for dear life but all of his fight has left him now. His body feels boneless, like every layer and fiber of his being instead has just gone. He feels trapped in a mind that wills his body to go onwards, while his body betrays him. He wishes that he wasn’t quite so good at lying, that those lies didn’t fall from his lips with such ease, when he tells her that he’s okay, that the wounds are no more than bumps and scrapes because he knows that in a moment he won’t be able to ease the blow as his body shifts to autopilot and he crumples to the ground. He hates lying to her and he knows she hates being lied to. She’s a frustratingly honest and earnest woman – it almost makes him laugh as for a moment he imagines her as a child, because he can’t believe that she would ever try to deceive to get her own way. She’s rather like him, she can be brash and bold, she wears her confidence like a suit of armour because she’s grown up in a world that is unkind, where she has fought for every little thing she has and she’s more than earned it tenfold. But he can lie and in fact he’s very good at it. It’s a skill he’s practiced over time, one of his earliest memories is of a lie where he tells his teacher he failed to turn in any homework because an alien took it from him. He was always one of the cool kids at school with a charisma and ego that has taken him far, a smile that reassures you he is in control, but at times can also challenge you to argue with his decision. He can be stubborn, big-headed and sometimes self-centered, but he works on it a day at a time and when he’s with Claire he’s always learning to be a better person, a better surgeon. Melendez knows if he asked her weaknesses, they could be there for hours as she would reel off anxieties, insecurities, reasons why she isn’t good enough, all the things she thinks she hasn’t learned from, but if he considered the same question they could be there for an eternity because none would come to mind. He wishes she could see herself through his own eyes.

She is a world-class doctor, a surgeon whose skills are so expansive and extraordinary that Neil has adjusted himself to expect the unexpected. He really wishes he could take credit for how she has flourished as his subordinate – a word seems so crude now, _subordinate_. The word doesn’t seem right when he tries to explain who she is to him now, but there are no words that can value what she means to him. He wishes he could pour out his soul and show her the Doctor Claire Browne he sees; how her hands can expertly suture a wound to leave the most minimal scar, how she sees more than a person in a bed, she unravels the context of their entire being to heal them. She’s the kind of woman who will dig deep and he sees the weight of the world on her shoulders. How he wishes his more experienced, calloused hands could carry the world for her… if only he could somehow alleviate the suffering she feels. But he _trusts_ her above everything else and if she says she can manage, says that she can continue he will diligently take a step away.

Sometimes she distracts him and he’ll catch her, lost in her own little world thinking about something as she idly plays with a stitch on her scrubs that is just a piece too loose and he will be lost for a moment while he considers what she’s thinking about. Maybe she’s thinking about the weather, a man or a list of groceries, he can’t quite tell, but he doesn’t mind – he’s just intrigued. _Enamoured._ He loves how she can be so enigmatic to him, while she wears her heart on her sleeve. He knows if he was to ask it of her, she would tell him -- but he doesn't want to pry, never wants to shatter the bond they've broken. So he waits, patiently, in hope that one day she will share more of her life with him. 

She is remarkable, extraordinarily talented, beautiful and empathetic. He relishes those moments where she stands by her decisions, where she fights for what she believes in and doesn’t allow the world to pass her by. The world could carry her away, washing her away in a wave; belittling her and knocking her down but instead she rises, she grows and she digs her heels in to steady herself. And, oh god, he’s in love with her. He’s in love with every inch of her.

So, why does he lie to her? Maybe it’s a force of habit, a routine that he just can’t quite kick. Maybe he tells her these lies: that he’s fine, he’s well and unharmed because he cannot stand the reality of the way she will look at him when she realizes her is the opposite. He doesn’t want to be the cause for her pain, he’s seen her hurt enough times already. His eyes have drifted to a close and his body hurtles to the earth – he’s trapped, he can’t speak, can’t see her but he hears the panic in her voice and it’s the last thing he remembers before there’s nothing. The nothingness isn’t warm and soft, like he had always imagined, but it isn’t cold and bitter either. There’s a lack of anything, there’s no feeling, no thought – there’s just nothing.

Claire tries to say something, to say anything in the moment but all she thinks is to ask him if he’s okay and then she immediately scolds herself for such stupidity because she realizes how wasted those words are as he collapses to the ground. She tries to move to him, to somehow break his fall but instead she just awkwardly lands on top of him, pulling at him as if she can somehow pull him back to his feet and it’ll all have been nothing. She wishes the world wasn’t moving so damn fast, right before her eyes because it doesn’t let up, even as her heart beats loudly in her ears. It’s only when she’s kneeling over him that she notices just how long she’s been holding her breath and she lets go with a sharp inhale. He isn’t moving and he doesn’t respond when she calls his name. All she knows is instinct as her fingers move to his neck, feeling for a pulse and words just repeat themselves over and over again in her head – _please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead_. She almost can’t hear herself think for the way her desperation overtakes all other senses. Her eyes are locked on his face and her hand trembles while she searches for a pulse that feels like it takes an eternity to find.

_It’s there_. It’s leaping and bounding and she couldn’t be more relieved. His heart beats on like a drum and once she is relieved to find it, she recognises just how hard it races as his body works on overtime to repair whatever has faulted. Claire can hear his own words in her mind: _treat him like any other patient_. Even though he isn’t just any other patients she pushes onward, focused on being the doctor he needs right now.

“I need some oxygen, now!” She demands and she isn’t really sure whom to. Even as her shouts draw attention and others scuffle to her aid, she barely notices the world around her. She has to just be a doctor.

She tilts his chin back, listens to those short sharp breaths and looks at his chest that rises and falls equally far too fast. He’s already in some kind of respiratory compromise as his body makes up for everything that is going wrong inside, drawing in more oxygen as the paramedic places an oxygen mask on high flow over his face and it frightens her for a moment when she sees his face obscured – she’s too afraid to let go, she doesn’t want to be here in this moment and she just wishes that somehow she could crawl into herself, to take herself away to some quiet place to sob to her heart’s content but she can’t because _Neil needs her_. Her fingers still at his neck assess his pulse, it’s bounding like a freight train and she swallows thickly because it almost reminds her of the way her mother used to rap her fist on her bedroom door while she would hide away, just trying to stave off the inevitable abuse that would follow sooner or later. He isn’t conscious, she pulls at his eyelids and flashes her torch in his eyes, they’re equal and reactive but as soon as her hand no longer supports his face, his neck just lolls to the side.

“Take the airway,” she demands of the paramedic who fits Neil’s head in his hands, presses his jaw forwards and tilts his head back to allow for oxygenation. She looks away; she doesn’t want to see how malleable he is right now.

Claire places her hands on Neil’s shoulders and she’s shaking him lightly now, she repeats his name again and again, hoping that it’s all some kind of fluke and he’ll wake up like he’s just dropped into some daze for a nap, even as that creeping feeling of ice fills the pit of her belly as she realizes just how drastically wrong something is.

“Neil, I need you to open your eyes.” She offers firmly, loudly. “Neil!” She tries again, as if somehow his compromise is that his hearing is affected but he doesn’t respond. “Neil, open your eyes for me.” She commands again, but he either can’t hear her, or he can’t respond. Her hands are pressed at the firm muscles on his shoulders as she squeezes them tightly, hoping for some kind of response to a painful stimulus as she repeats his name again. “Neil! Neil, open your eyes for me. Doctor Melendez, open your eyes.” Each time she speaks, she hears how her voice goes just a touch higher and higher in pitch.

She’s never one to shy away from a case and particularly one she can lead, but right now she wants nothing more than for Doctor Lim or Doctor Park to push her aside, to take over and take on the responsibility because all of a sudden she is absolutely _terrified_ of making a wrong move, of somehow hurting someone she cares about – hurting the damn boss she’s in love with. Her hands are moving along his body, patting the outline of his form as she searches for a cause and then it hits her like a ton of bricks and she grasps at his shirt, untucking it from his belt with a firm yanking motion as she exposes his skin to her and she assesses the bruise on his abdomen – the bruise he had tried to conceal from her, to tell her was fine and nothing to worry about and she feels bile settle at the back of her throat because she wonders for just _how long_ he had known something was drastically wrong. She palpates the bruise and surrounding area and she could swear it’s like her heart has stopped and she has been suspended in time as she realizes his spleen has perforated and she hadn’t even noticed. _What kind of doctor would miss that_?

“I think… I think it’s his spleen.” She offers to the paramedic, trying to break her own silence to drag herself away from the moment. “I’m going to start two wide-bore lines, we don’t have the time to stay and play. I want you to bag him, pre-oxygenate while I cannulate, we need to be ready to go in under 6 minutes. Pre-alert trauma, let them know we’re on our way, uh…” her eyes drift to look at his badge, but it’s like the letters mean nothing to her all of a sudden.

“Roger that, it’s Steve, by the way.” He offers with a sympathetic nod of the head and she’s grateful.

“Thanks, Steve.”

She’s up and running back to the ambulance while Steve calls for another pair of hands to help him pre-oxygenate. She suddenly feels rejuvenated, like she could run a thousand miles and be carried on next to no sleep. Her feet hit the floor of the ambulance heavily as she swings herself in from the handlebar, she already knows what she wants and where she needs to look. She grabs a bag and stuffs it with cannulas, a handful of bags of fluid and others bits and pieces that she prays to whatever god she isn’t entirely sure she believes in as she makes her way back to Neil, just as Steve is hooking him up to monitoring and collecting a set of observations. Claire drops the bag on the ground with a god-awful thud and she’s on her knees again as she stares at the monitoring, his heart is still racing but there’s no obvious arrhythmia right now and that’s the best she can hope for. In her mind’s eye she can just hear the instructor at med school running through the causes of cardiac arrest and she’s hung up for a split second as she remembers Professor Biggs saying ‘trauma’.

The world is moving so fast as Neil is scooped onto a trolley, as Steve’s colleague who had politely introduced herself as Nettie had cannulated Neil while Claire intubates.  
  
“Inflate the cuff,” Claire tells Steve.

“I’ve got IV access, starting 1 litre of saline now, wide open.” Nettie adds. Claire nods with a very brief acknowledgement, taking her stethoscope to Neil’s chest while Steve ventilates carefully.

“I’ve got good, bilateral air entry.” Claire confirms as Neil fixes the tube in place at Neil’s mouth.

  
“15cm to teeth.” Steve adds.

“Okay, we’re good to go.” She agrees, helping to wheel the trolley into the back of the ambulance, collecting the bag of supplies she had dropped to the ground for the journey. She places herself in the seat at Neil’s head, taking the bag as she ventilates Neil herself for the meanwhile. “Call ahead, we’ve got a major trauma incoming, possible ruptured spleen, hypotensive at 74/ 39, pulse 115… Nettie, start the second bag of saline on that line, squeeze it through,” she interrupts herself as the pulse increases. “Tell them it’s a major haemorrhage, we’re going to need at least 4 units O-neg and platelets… Tell them it’s Neil.”

  
By the time they arrive at the ER, she feels as though her legs will give way as the ambulance doors open and Neil is rushed from her grip and even though she wills herself to keep moving, her legs are trapped like she is cemented to the ground. A nurse she knows as Jez takes over Neil’s airway, taking the ambu-bag from her hands and she wants to crumple to the ground. She’s trying to give some kind of a handover but the words just seem to be becoming more and more garbled as her mouth just seems to run dry. “I—I think it’s his spleen.” She offers as Nettie takes over from her with a reassuring nod.

“This is Neil Melendez, 41. He’s sustained abdominal trauma. Hypotensive and tachycardic on route, he’s had 3 litres of saline already – we radioed ahead for blood, he’s going to be needing that right away. Intubated in field, good oxygenation and equal bilateral air entry. GCS 7, pupils equal and reactive at 3mm. No known drug allergies or past medical, otherwise fit at healthy.”

“Trauma 2 please,” is the last thing Claire hears as he’s rushed beyond those big glass doors of the ER and she can’t bring herself to move. She’s stunned and trapped, she doesn’t know what to do and she doesn’t know if what she’s done already was enough or too much or if Neil will even survive. She knows these people, knows this place, knows that if Neil is going to have any chance then this is the best place for him.

_“You practically live in this place.” Claire teases him and even though his face is partially obscured by his surgical mask, she just knows that he is smiling._  
  
“I think I will die in this hospital one day too.” He retorts, meaninglessly.

_“You will practically fade away if you never go out. Don’t you have more to do with your life?”_

_“Than what? Watching you suture a liver?” He offers, his eyebrows are raised now and she sees him crinkle his forehead in that way he does. He’s taunting her, looking for a reaction. “If I don’t watch you suture this liver, then who will?”_

_“I have a life too, you know.” She eventually retorts. “You should try it sometime, go catch a movie or play baseball or… I don’t know. Maybe try a coffee? Do you even like coffee? You don’t come across as the sort who drinks coffee.”_

_“Is that a question or a statement?”_

_“Both.” She decides, running the needle through the flesh carefully, while she closes up._

_“Of course I like coffee, the coffee in the staff room is fine.”_

_“That’s not the kind of coffee I meant.” She remarks._

_“I don’t understand what you mean, coffee is coffee.” He replies, decidedly._

_“Well don’t blame me if you never see daylight, never live outside this OR.”_

_“You’re my junior. If I’m in this OR, you are too.”_

_“Dang it Melendez, you need to get out and see more of the world. I’m tired of being in your damn OR.” Julianne, the anaesthetist adds from the head end of the patient._

_“See, even Doctor Addison agrees with me.” Claire proclaims._

_“Do I gotta get someone to ask you on a date Melendez?” Julianne adds, weighing in yet again. “I’m sure I’ve got a spare daughter somewhere if you’re looking for an excuse to get out more often.”_

_“You’re ganging up on me now, that’s hardly fair, it’s two against one.” He protests. “I’m perfectly fine, beside I’m not even looking for any sort of relationship right now. I’ve decided to focus on my work and the training of my team.”_

_“Oh, how noble of you, Doctor Melendez… There, done.” Claire declares to no one in particular._

_“Over to you, Julianne, let’s get this patient woken up. Page me if you need me. Doctor Browne, I believe you have a patient to review and I have some post-op notes to go and write.”_

“Hey there, come on down.” Steve breaks the silence and draws her back from a memory and she feels the tears at her eyes, brimming and desperate to fall, but she inhales sharply and refuses to allow it. Instead she furrows her brow and it makes her look angry. “He’s gonna be alright, these are the best in the game.” Steve offers some sort of reassurance to her and holds out his hand to help her out of the back of the truck.

“It’s been a pretty tough day,” she states, trying to excuse her emotions to him. As if she needs to justify why she is so sad. She takes his hand as she steps out of the ambulance, placing her feet on the hard ground and she swears her legs are going to give way.

“Yeah, you got that right for sure.” She takes her hand back from him and he pats her on the shoulder, “you take care won’t you, Doctor Browne?”

“Oh, yeah. Thanks. It’s Claire, by the way.”

“Sure thing Claire, see you around. Hopefully not too soon.”

“Yeah, you too.” 

Despite how dark it is and how the night-time air is frigid and seems to suck the air from her she sits on the bench by the bridge. She doesn’t really know what else to do with herself, can’t think of a way to be useful when all her hands do is tremble because all they can feel is his skin under he touch. Every time she closes her eyes she sees his hair, all greyed by the dust and dirt and despite it all he’s still smiling in her mind’s eye. She can hear him say that she is extraordinary and instead of her heart swelling with pride, she is filled with a fear for the safety of the lives of her friends and that cruel guilt when she realises she has abandoned them in their time of need. She feels a hard urge to go back, but then it’s overwhelmed by a wave of complete fear and her face ends up buried in her hands. She is afraid to return to the hospital, she doesn’t want to hear that Melendez did not survive a surgery. Doesn’t want to hear that they’ve not been able to find Shaun. Doesn’t want to hear that somehow Park was injured in all the confusion when in the pit of her belly it just hurts as she berates herself for being the one to make it out unscathed. Instead she just hears her mother’s words in her ears, ringing over and over again as they tell her she isn’t good enough, not worthy enough, not strong enough until she suffocates in her fear.

She lets out a long, shaky sobs that she hopes no one can hear, because she cannot bring herself to explain why she cries. She is a wounded animal and she wants to be left alone to her own devices, because the only one who could soothe her right now would be Melendez, in his own unique way where he says nothing at all. It’s almost as if Claire can feel his hand on her shoulder and it racks another sob from her. With a sharp inhale she wishes she could run far, far away and never come back but she doesn’t. She lets her feet carry herself back to the hospital, her flesh uncomfortably cooled by the night air and as the adrenaline wears off she shivers lightly until her feet are planted at the doors of the ER. 

When she sits by his side at the ICU, she hears none of what the nurse tells her. She is completely oblivious to the numbers on the screen and she ignores every single instinct as a doctor to do whatever she needs to do to heal him, because right now there’s not a single thing she can do. She sinks deeply into the seat, her legs crossed beneath herself as she plants herself so she’s looking at him, but cosy and warm enough. She’s satisfied enough by the fact that he’s alive and even though the tube in his mouth breathes for him and his life is supported by machines, the clicking, whooshing and dropping sounds are too soothing as she drift, trying to hold out and stay awake and even despite the way her body aches and protests with every single movement, she somehow still manages to adjust to hold his hand from her chair. He is warm, he breathes and his skin is flushed with the lightest colour. The grime and dust are gone now and he looks safe and peaceful. It’s the very least she can hope for and while she tries to stay awake for as long as she possibly can, as if should she look away he would be just another life that slips away from her – she drifts into a deep sleep. She’s not a religious woman, she doesn’t even know whom she should to pray too, but in her mind she says some kind of prayer and hope that some sort of deity listens to her. She even offers to the silence in the room that if he survives, she would take up a life of religion.

But for now, he’s alive and that’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope you're all well, I haven't written for the longest time but as an RN during the pandemic I've been spending my time when I'm not working watching TV (namely The Good Doctor) and I wanted to branch out from being a couch potato and write to expand on their relationship during the events of 3x19. I would love to expand more on their relationship, I love this slow burn relationship. Take care, stay safe and healthy. Sending love <3


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